Events: (Note that this is not the preferable method of finding events because not all events have been assigned topics yet)

A series of bombings targets Jews in Iraq. These attacks are later attributed to Israeli agents to allegedly panic Jews into emigrating to Israel, starting a long-standing controversy that continues unresolved. [Ha'aretz, 6/4/2006]

Following the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel takes over the administration of the West Bank and Gaza. Whereas Egyptian President Gamal Abddul Nasser had been tough on Islamist militants (see 1954-1970), Israel is much more permissive. One of their first actions is to release Sheikh Ahmed Yassin from prison. Yassin, a charismatic radical Islamist and the future founder of Hamas had been jailed in 1965 during one of Nasser’s crackdowns. [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 195] David Shipler, a former New York Times reporter, later recounts that he was told by the military governor of the Gaza Strip, Brigadier General Yitzhak Segev, that the Israeli government had financed the Islamic movement to couteract the PLO and the communists. According to Martha Kessler, a senior analyst for the CIA, “we saw Israel cultivate Islam as a counterweight to Palestinian nationalism.” In the 1970s, Yassin is able to form some Islamic organizations (see 1973-1978). In the 1980s, he forms Hamas as the military arm of his organizations (see 1987). [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 195, 197, 198]

Golda Meir. [Source: Al Gilbert]President Nixon dictates a memo to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger regarding his position on Israel: “They [Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and Israel’s ambassador to the US Yitzhak Rabin] must recognize that our interests are basically pro-freedom and not just pro-Israel because of the Jewish vote.… What all this adds up to is that Mrs. Meir, Rabin, et al., must trust RN [Nixon] completely.… He will see to it that Israel always has ‘an edge.‘… But he must carry with him the 60 percent of the American people who are in what is called the silent majority, and who must be depended upon in the event that we have to take a strong hand against Soviet expansion in the Mideast.… It is time our friends in Israel understood this. This is going to be the policy of our country. Unless they understand it and act as if they understood it right now, they are down the tubes.” [Reeves, 2001, pp. 43]

Richard Perle, a young neoconservative just hired for the staff of Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s), is given a classified CIA report on alleged past Soviet treaty violations by CIA analyst David Sullivan. Apparently Sullivan leaks the report to pressure the US government to take a harder stance on the Soviet Union. Sullivan quits before an incensed CIA Director Stansfield Turner can fire him. Turner urges Jackson to fire Perle, but Jackson not only refuses, he also hires Sullivan for his staff. Sullivan and Perle establish an informal right-wing network called “the Madison Group” after their usual meeting place, the Madison Hotel Coffee Shop. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

Two of the airliners detonated by the hijackers at Dawson’s Field on September 12, 1970. [Source: Rolls Press / Popperfoto / Getty Images]The first major act of Middle East terrorism on a global scale plays out in Jordan. Militant Palestinian nationalists hijack four Western commercial airliners and fly the planes and their passengers—now hostages—to a desert airfield near Amman. After negotiations, they release the hostages and blow up the empty airliners for the news cameras. Jordan’s King Hussein responds by mobilizing his military for a showdown with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), a guerrilla organization based in his country. Hussein worries that Iraq or Syria might intervene on behalf of the PLO, and lets the US know that he would like US support in that event. Instead, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger makes the unlikely suggestion that Israel, not the US, step in to help Jordan if need be. President Nixon uses the incident to challenge the Soviet Union, warning the Soviets not to intervene if the US moves to prevent Syrian tanks from entering Jordan. Nixon often lets the Soviets and other adversaries think that he is capable of the most irrational acts—the “madman theory,” both Nixon and his critics call it—but Kissinger eventually convinces Nixon to support the idea of Israeli intervention. King Hussein secretly cables the British government to request an Israeli air strike, a cable routed to Washington via Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Nixon gives his approval and Israel moves in. 3,000 Palestinians and Jordanians die in the subsequent conflict, dubbed “Black September” in the Arab world. Hussein loses influence and prestige among his fellow Arab leaders, and the PLO, energized by the conflict, moves into Lebanon. PLO leader Yasser Arafat takes undisputed control of the organization. Oil-supplying nations rally behind the Palestinian cause, and international terrorist incidents begin to escalate. [Werth, 2006, pp. 90-91]

An FBI wiretap at the Israeli Embassy in Washington picks up Richard Perle, an aide to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA—see Early 1970s), discussing classified information with an Israeli official. This is the second time Perle has been involved in providing classified information to Israel (see Late 1969). This data was given to Perle by National Security Council staff member Helmut “Hal” Sonnenfeldt, who has been under investigation since 1967 for providing classified documents to the Israelis. [Atlantic Monthly, 5/1982; American Conservative, 3/24/2003; CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

In 1973 Israeli military authorities in charge of the West Bank and Gaza allow Sheikh Ahmed Yassin to establish the Islamic Center, an Islamic fundamentalist organization. With Israel’s support, Yassin’s organization soon gains control of hundreds of mosques, charities, and schools which serve as recruiting centers for militant Islamic fundamentalism. In 1976 Yassin creates another organization called the Islamic Association that forms hundreds of branches in Gaza. In 1978 the Islamic Association is licensed by the government of Menachem Begin over the objections of moderate Palesinians including the Commissioner of the Muslim Waqf in the Gaza Strip, Rafat Abu Shaban. Yassin also recieves funding from business leaders in Saudi Arabia who are also hostile to the secular PLO for religious reasons. The Saudi government, however, steps in and attempts to halt the private funds going to Yassin, because they view him as a tool of Israel. [United Press International, 2/24/2001; CounterPunch, 1/18/2003; Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 195 - 197] Yassin will go on to form Hamas in the 1980s, which is created with the help of Israeli intelligence (see 1987).

Congressman Charlie Wilson (R-TX) contacts Israeli congressional liaison officer Zvi Rafiah regarding the Yom Kippur War. A very close working relationship develops between the two legislators that lasts many years. According to journalist and author George Crile, “Rafiah is a short, very smart Israeli who Wilson always believed was a highly placed Mossad agent.” Crile will also say: “Rafiah had always acted as if he owned Wilson’s office. One of the staffers kept a list of people he needed to lobby. He would use the phones, give projects to the staff, and call on Charlie to intervene whenever he needed him.” [Crile, 2003, pp. 31-33, 144] A close associate of prominent neoconservative Richard Perle will later be accused of passing classified secrets to Rafiah (see March 1978).

TWA logo. [Source: Surfside Hawaii (.com)]TWA Flight 841, en route to New York City from Tel Aviv, explodes in mid-air. The Boeing 747 stopped in Athens for a routine layover, took off, and shortly thereafter reported an engine on fire. Soon after the report, the plane explodes and crashes into the Ionian Sea. Seventy-nine passengers and nine crew members die. A TWA spokesman in New York says that sabotage is “highly unlikely,” but a youth organization in Beirut with connections to Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal claims that one of its members surreptitiously placed a bomb on board. In general, aviation officials scoff at the idea that a terrorist would have bombed a plane. However, in May 1995, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will find that the plane was destroyed by a bomb. The NTSB’s final report will say that the “probable cause of this accident was the detonation of an explosive device within the aft cargo compartment of the aircraft which rendered the aircraft uncontrollable.” [Board, 5/26/1975 ; Werth, 2006, pp. 324-325]

Senator Frank Church. [Source: Wally McNamee / Corbis]A Senate committee tasked to investigate the activities of US intelligence organizations finds a plethora of abuses and criminal behaviors, and recommends strict legal restraints and firm Congressional oversight. The “Church Committee,” chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID), a former Army intelligence officer with a strong understanding of the necessity for intelligence-gathering, notes in its final report that the CIA in particular had been overly cooperative with the Nixon administration in spying on US citizens for political purposes (see December 21, 1974); US intelligence agencies had also gone beyond the law in assassination attempts on foreign government officials in, among other places, Africa, Latin America, and Vietnam. Church himself accused the CIA of providing the White House with what, in essence, is a “private army,” outside of Congressional oversight and control, and called the CIA a “rogue elephant rampaging out of control.” The committee will reveal the existence of hitherto-unsuspected operations such as HT Lingual, which had CIA agents secretly opening and reading US citizens’ international mail, and other operations which included secret, unauthorized wiretaps, dossier compilations, and even medical experiments. For himself, Church, the former intelligence officer, concluded that the CIA should conduct covert operations only “in a national emergency or in cases where intervention is clearly in tune with our traditional principles,” and restrain the CIA from intervening in the affairs of third-world nations without oversight or consequence. CIA director William Colby is somewhat of an unlikely ally to Church; although he does not fully cooperate with either the Church or Pike commissions, he feels that the CIA’s image is badly in need of rehabilitation. Indeed, Colby later writes, “I believed that Congress was within its constitutional rights to undertake a long-overdue and thoroughgoing review of the agency and the intelligence community. I did not share the view that intelligence was solely a function of the Executive Branch and must be protected from Congressional prying. Quite the contrary.” Conservatives later blame the Church Commission for “betray[ing] CIA agents and operations,” in the words of American Spectator editor R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr, referencing the 1975 assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch in Greece. The chief counsel of the Church Committee accuses CIA defenders and other conservatives of “danc[ing] on the grave of Richard Welch in the most cynical way.” It is documented fact that the Church Commission exposed no agents and no operations, and compromised no sources; even Colby’s successor, George H.W. Bush, later admits that Welch’s death had nothing to do with the Church Committee. (In 1980, Church will lose re-election to the Senate in part because of accusations of his committee’s responsibility for Welch’s death by his Republican opponent, Jim McClure.) [American Prospect, 11/5/2001; History Matters Archive, 3/27/2002; Assassination Archives and Research Center, 11/23/2002]Final Report Excoriates CIA - The Committee’s final report concludes, “Domestic intelligence activity has threatened and undermined the Constitutional rights of Americans to free speech, association and privacy. It has done so primarily because the Constitutional system for checking abuse of power has not been applied.” The report is particularly critical of the CIA’s successful, and clandestine, manipulation of the US media. It observes: “The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.” The report identifies over 50 US journalists directly employed by the CIA, along with many others who were affiliated and paid by the CIA, and reveals the CIA’s policy to have “their” journalists and authors publish CIA-approved information, and disinformation, overseas in order to get that material disseminated in the United States. The report quotes the CIA’s Chief of the Covert Action Staff as writing, “Get books published or distributed abroad without revealing any US influence, by covertly subsidizing foreign publicans or booksellers.…Get books published for operational reasons, regardless of commercial viability.…The advantage of our direct contact with the author is that we can acquaint him in great detail with our intentions; that we can provide him with whatever material we want him to include and that we can check the manuscript at every stage…. [The agency] must make sure the actual manuscript will correspond with our operational and propagandistic intention.” The report finds that over 1,000 books were either published, subsidized, or sponsored by the CIA by the end of 1967; all of these books were published in the US either in their original form or excerpted in US magazines and newspapers. “In examining the CIA’s past and present use of the US media,” the report observes, “the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating or incidentally misleading the American public. The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the US journalists and media organizations.” CIA Withheld Info on Kennedy Assassination, Castro Plots, King Surveillance - The committee also finds that the CIA withheld critical information about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy from the Warren Commission, information about government assassination plots against Fidel Castro of Cuba (see, e.g., November 20, 1975, Early 1961-June 1965, March 1960-August 1960, and Early 1963); and that the FBI had conducted a counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) against Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Mafia boss Sam Giancana was slated to testify before the committee about his organization’s ties to the CIA, but before he could testify, he was murdered in his home—including having six bullet wounds in a circle around his mouth. Another committee witness, union leader Jimmy Hoffa, disappeared before he could testify. Hoffa’s body has never been found. Mafia hitman Johnny Roselli was murdered before he could testify before the committee: in September 1976, the Washington Post will print excerpts from Roselli’s last interview, with journalist Jack Anderson, before his death; Anderson will write, “When [Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey] Oswald was picked up, the underworld conspirators feared he would crack and disclose information that might lead to them. This almost certainly would have brought a massive US crackdown on the Mafia. So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald.” (Anderson’s contention has not been proven.) The murders of Giancana and Roselli, and the disappearance and apparent murder of Hoffa, will lead to an inconclusive investigation by the House of the assassinations of Kennedy and King. [Spartacus Educational, 12/18/2002]Leads to FISA - The findings of the Church Committee will inspire the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (see 1978), and the standing committees on intelligence in the House and Senate. [Assassination Archives and Research Center, 11/23/2002]Simultaneous Investigation in House - The Church Committee operates alongside another investigative body in the House of Representatives, the Pike Committee (see January 29, 1976). Church Committee Smeared After 9/11 - After the 9/11 attacks, conservative critics will once again bash the Church Committee; former Secretary of State James Baker will say within hours of the attacks that the Church report had caused the US to “unilaterally disarm in terms of our intelligence capabilities,” a sentiment echoed by the editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal, who will observe that the opening of the Church hearings was “the moment that our nation moved from an intelligence to anti-intelligence footing.” Perhaps the harshest criticism will come from conservative novelist and military historian Tom Clancy, who will say, “The CIA was gutted by people on the political left who don’t like intelligence operations. And as a result of that, as an indirect result of that, we’ve lost 5,000 citizens last week.” [Gerald K. Haines, 1/20/2003]

Paul Wolfowitz, a young neoconservative with the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA—see 1973), is investigated for giving classified documents on the proposed sale of US weapons to an Arab government to an Israeli government official, through the auspices of an official with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). An inquiry is launched but later dropped, and Wolfowitz will continue with ACDA through 1980. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

During breakfast at Washington’s Madison Hotel, Stephen Bryen, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer and a close associate of Richard Perle, is overheard offering to pass classified material to Zvi Rafiah, the Congressional liaison officer for the Israeli embassy and a suspected senior Mossad officer (see October 1973). [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 7/4/1986] “I have the Pentagon document on the bases, which you are welcome to see,” Bryen reportedly says. [Nation, 6/29/1985] The eavesdropper is Michael Saba, a businessman and former executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans. Saba, who recognizes Bryen as a staff member of the Senate Committee, promptly reports the incident to the Justice Department, which quickly launches an FBI investigation. The investigation will find that Bryen has illegally obtained classified documents of military and scientific importance and that he has been seeking material that “could prove to be a major embarrassment to the US government.” [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 7/4/1986] The investigation also learns that he has been meeting with Zvi Rafiah “two or three times a week.” [Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 7/4/1986] The FBI ultimately assembles “a good circumstantial case” that Rafiah “routinely issued orders to Bryen” and will recommend that the case be brought before an investigative grand jury for espionage. Instead, the case will be closed (see April 1979). [Nation, 6/29/1985; Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 7/4/1986]

Albert Wohlstetter, the ideological father of neoconservatism (see 1965), arranges a meeting in Istanbul bringing together 13 Americans, 13 Turks, and 13 Europeans. Wohlstetter’s protege, Richard Perle, is possibly present. The policies discussed at the meeting later become the basis of the Turgut Ozal administration’s pro-American policies in Turkey (see September 1980)
(see December 1983). [American Enterprise Institute, 11/22/2003] Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, is a mentor to Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. [Think Tank, 11/14/2002] He sees Turkey as “a US staging post for Middle East contingencies and as a strategic ally of Israel.” [Evriviades, 1999]

Israel considers attacking a key part of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. The idea is sparked when the Indian intelligence service Research and Analysis Wing intercepts a US cable saying that Pakistan will be able to explode a bomb within two or three years (see 1979). The Israelis knew that Pakistan was working on a nuclear weapons project, but thought it was not close to making such progress. Shocked by the Pakistani advances, they begin to plan a pre-emptive strike against one of the Pakistani facilities, the laboratory of scientist A. Q. Khan in Kahuta. However, the US learns of the plan and pressures the Israelis to put it on ice, which they do. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 86]

Neoconservatives Albert Wohlstetter and his protege, Richard Perle, work within the US and Israeli defense establishments to promote Turkey as a key US and Israeli strategic ally (see 1979). This effort is in part motivated by concerns raised by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Perle and other officials in the Reagan administration play a key role in promoting an alliance between Israel and Turkey. [Evriviades, 1999; Foreign Policy Research Institute, 9/1999; Nation, 8/23/2002] This alliance is also strongly supported by “conservative Jewish-American groups working with the Turkish legation in Washington and a number of prominent Turkish-American businessmen with business and blood connections with Turkish Jews in Istanbul and those who had settled in Israel.” [Evriviades, 1999]

Dr. Stephen Bryen, a neoconservative staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is accused of espionage against the US. An affidavit written by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Robert Keuch recommends a grand jury convene to hear evidence that Bryen had offered classified information to an Israeli Embassy official, Zvi Rafiah, the Mossad station chief in Washington (see March 1978). Bryen made the offer in the presence of the director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Bryen refused to take an FBI lie detector test, but the AIPAC director agreed, and passed the test. One of Bryen’s Senate committee colleagues also tells FBI investigators that she later saw Bryen offering a pile of documents to Rafiah from an open safe in Bryen’s Senate office. Bryen’s fingerprints were found on classified documents which he denied ever handling—the same documents he allegedly offered to Rafiah. The investigation is derailed when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee refuses to grant the FBI access to files key to the probe. Bryen will resign his position with the committee at the insistence of Philip Heymann, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division, and under strong pressure from senators Clifford Case (R-NJ), who is Bryen’s boss, and Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA). Heymann happens to be a close personal friend and associate of Bryen’s attorney. Soon after his resignation, Bryen will take a post as the executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). In 1981, neoconservative Richard Perle, an assistant secretary of defense and then-aide to Jackson, will secure Bryen top-secret security clearance. Bryen will become Perle’s deputy, and will continue to provide Israel with classified information and materials (see May 1988 and After). [Nation, 6/29/1985; Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 7/4/1986; CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

Menachem Begin and Jerry Falwell. [Source: Bibliotecapleyades (.net)]Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin seeks to expand his base of influence in the US. Israel has long enjoyed the support of liberal Democrats, so Begin begins reaching out to conservative American evangelicals who, in many cases, espouse anti-Semitic views (see February 1, 1972). But more important to Begin is the fact that these conservative Christians are becoming politically active and powerful. Begin seeks out conservative televangelist and political activist Jerry Falwell, who publicly views the birth of Israel as “the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.” Falwell has often said that the friendship between the US and Israel is a cornerstone both of political stability in the Middle East and a matter of faith. Begin presents Falwell with the prestigious Jabotinsky Award, making Falwell the first non-Jew to ever receive the award. More tangibly, he also gives Falwell’s ministry a private jet. [Unger, 2007, pp. 109]

Israel secretly changes its policy towards Iran, and now seeks a level of rapprochement with that nation. Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon proposes that President Jimmy Carter, who is struggling to find a diplomatic means to get the 52 American hostages released, begin secretly selling US arms to Iran. Carter angrily refuses. But unbeknownst to Carter, Israel will begin selling its own arms to Iran shortly thereafter. Interestingly, some officials in the US State Department and the CIA know of the Israeli arms sales to Iran. [New Yorker, 11/2/1992]

Iran conducts a limited air strike against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, after being publicly exhorted to do so by Israel’s chief of Army intelligence. The Osirak reactor is at the same site as the Iraq Nuclear Research Center, in al-Tuwaitha, where Israeli intelligence believes the first Arab atomic bomb will be assembled. The strike is part of a larger strike by Iran against a conventional electric power plant near Baghdad. The strike inflicts only minor damage, and the plant is quickly repaired and brought back online. Iran will not conduct any further air strikes against Iraqi nuclear facilities throughout the entire Iran-Iraq War. In fact, it is not clear whether the Iranian strike is a pre-planned bombing raid by Iranian war planners, or an air strike by two pilots with a chance at a target of opportunity. [New Yorker, 11/2/1992; Institute for National Strategic Studies, 5/1995] In June 1981, Israel will obliterate the Osirak facility (see June 7, 1981).

F-14 spare parts shipped to Iran. [Source: Reuben Johnson / Weekly Standard]Israeli officials secretly ask Reagan administration officials for authorization to transfer arms of US origin to Iran. Officials in the Departments of Defense and State have known of Israeli arms sales to Iran that predate Reagan’s installation as president and the freeing of the American hostages, and since Reagan’s ascension to power, plans for US arms sales to Iran have been in the works (see January 28, 1981). Secretary of State Alexander Haig tells Israel that it is acceptable “in principle” for Israel to sell only F-4 fighter plane parts, and the US must approve specific arms-sales lists in advance. It shortly becomes evident, according to State Department documents leaked years later to the press, that Israel is not submitting lists for approval, and is selling US-made arms to Iran far in excess of spare parts for a specific model of fighter jet. (By the mid-1980s, officials will acknowledge that several billion dollars’ worth of ammunition and parts worth would flow from Israel to Iran each year.) Little oversight is exercised on the arms sales; one US ambassador to the region will say in 1992, “[I]t is probable that those who were to serve as their proxies—Israel and private international arms dealers—had agendas of their own, and the end result was that more arms were shipped than anyone in the administration wanted.” The Israeli arms transfers also violate the Arms Export Control Act, which requires written permission from the US for a nation to transfer US-made arms to a third party, and requires the president to immediately inform Congress when such transfers take place. [New Yorker, 11/2/1992]

A. Q. Khan supplier Peter Griffin is threatened in Bonn, Germany. This threat may be part of a campaign by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad targeting Khan’s European suppliers, which is ongoing at this time (see Early 1981). Griffin, who is in Bonn to collect money for shipments of equipment to Khan’s nuclear program in Pakistan from Britain, will later say: “I was in a bar when a stranger sat down next to me. ‘You’re Peter Griffin,’ he said. ‘We don’t like what you’re doing, so stop it.” Griffin does not stop doing business with Khan, but begins keeping records of all his business dealings and movements, puts his company records in a bank vault, and tells his wife that if anything should happen to him, she should give everything to their son. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 88]

At some time in 1981, Pakistan begins digging some tunnels under the Ras Koh mountains. The work is apparently related to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, which begins preparation for a cold test of a nuclear weapon this year (see Shortly After May 1, 1981). This work is noticed by both India and Israel, who also see other signs that work is continuing on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Tunnels in these mountains will be used when Pakistan tests nuclear weapons in 1998 (see May 28, 1998). [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 86, 275]

Alcom Engineering, an Italian company that is supplying metal components to the A. Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network, receives a threatening letter, warning it to stop doing so. Alcom then stops trading with the Khan network. This is apparently part of a campaign by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to hamper Khan’s network in Europe (see Early 1981). [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 87]

The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad attacks a German man named Heinz Mebus, who is part of A. Q. Khan’s nuclear proliferation network. The attack is in the form of a letter bomb, sent to Mebus’ home in Erlangen, West Germany. Mebus, who had helped build fluoride and uranium conversion plants for Pakistan in 1979, is not injured, but his dog is killed. This is part of a campaign by Mossad against Khan’s European associates (see Early 1981), and police soon link it to another similar attack (see February 20, 1981). [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 87]

The Israeli intelligence service Mossad begins a bombing and intimidation campaign in Europe targeting people linked to A. Q. Khan’s nuclear proliferation network, which is helping Pakistan build a nuclear weapon. After Israel bombs an Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak in June 1981, the campaign intensifies. Attacks are carried out and warnings given in Europe against Khan’s suppliers and middlemen (see Early 1981, February 20, 1981, Early 1981, November 1981, and 1981). The bombings are investigated by the police forces in the countries in which they occur and are traced to a group of apparent fronts for Mossad: the Group for Non-Proliferation in South Asia, the Committee to Safeguard the Islamic Revolution, and the League for Protecting the Sub-Continent. European police realize that a state-backed group is probably behind the bombings and suspect Mossad, due to the problematic relations between Israel and the Islamic world. Authors Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark will also say that Mossad was behind the bombings, partly based on interviews of “senior intelligence sources” in Israel in 2006. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 87-8, 476]

A bomb planted by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad goes off outside the home of Eduard German in Berne, Switzerland. German is the managing director of CORA engineering, which had exported a gasification and solidification unit to Pakistan in 1979 to help A. Q. Khan’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb, and is soon planning to supply another such unit. The bombing is one of a series by Mossad against Khan’s suppliers in Europe (see Early 1981). The company also receives an anonymous call saying it should stop trading with Pakistan, and this threat is followed by a similar one two months later. At this point the company realizes US intelligence knows everything about its operations (see April 1981), and so halts its dealings with Pakistan. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 87]

Richard Perle, a former Senate aide (see Late 1969) and consultant with the Abington Corporation defense consultancy firm, has recently become an assistant secretary of defense. Two of his first clients with Abington were Israeli arms dealers Shlomo Zabludowicz, and his son Chaim Zabludowicz (see March 1980), who now want to sell the US weapons produced by Soltam Ltd, an Israeli company that makes mortars, artillery, ammunition, and other civilian and military products. Shlomo Zabludowicz is the founder of Soltam and its principal shareholder. Soltam agrees to pay Abington $10,000 a month for a period of one year. In return, Perle writes a letter to the secretary of the Army recommending the evaluation and purchase of 155 mm. shells manufactured by Soltam. [New York Times, 4/17/1983; CounterPunch, 2/28/2004] Perle will say in a later interview with the New York Times that the amount was paid to him for services he provided Soltam during the previous year, and not for services rendered while working in the Pentagon. In January 1982, he will also receive a portion of a $90,000 fee that Soltam pays to Abington (see January 1982) The payments made to Perle and Abington are both funneled though Tamares, a small London-based subsidiary of Salgad, another company founded by Shlomo Zabludowicze and based in Liechtenstein. [New York Times, 4/17/1983] When Perle leaves his Defense Department position in 1987, he will go to work for Soltam. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

The Israeli intelligence service Mossad bombs a German company that supplies parts for A. Q. Khan’s nuclear weapons program in Pakistan. The company had been doing business with Khan through one of his representatives in Paris since 1976 and had sold Pakistan lead shielding and remote-controlled equipment to maneuver radioactive substances. The bomb is part of a campaign by Mossad targeting members of Khan’s nuclear proliferation network (see Early 1981). The company also receives three threatening calls, and another such call is made to the local Reuters office. However, the company continues to supply equipment to help Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 88]

In response to information it has received about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program (see June 2, 1981), Israel begins planning a pre-emptive strike against one of Pakistan’s main nuclear facilities. The complex to be targeted is in Kahuta, near Islamabad, and houses Pakistan’s uranium enrichment centrifuges. However, the plan is not implemented due to US pressure, applied due to friendly US relations with Pakistan and Pakistani co-operation on anti-Soviet efforts in Afghanistan. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 86]

Israel’s permanent representative to the UN, Yehuda Blum, tells the UN General Assembly that “there is abundant evidence indicating that [Pakistan] is producing nuclear weapons.” He adds that “at the Engineering Research Labs… Pakistan is secretly constructing a plant for the production of weapons-grade enriched uranium by centrifuges” based on a technology “stolen from the URENCO plant in the Netherlands.” He also says that Pakistan has established front companies in 14 countries to acquire components, and that Pakistan is close to building a cascade of at least 1,000 centrifuges. In addition, the Pakistanis intend to build more than 10,000 of them, “which in turn could produce about 150 kg of enriched uranium a year, sufficient for seven nuclear explosive devices every year.” Authors Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark will write that this information is “what the US had known for several years but had chosen not to share with the rest of the world.” [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 85-86]

The US State Department writes a cable to Israel to allay Israeli fears about Pakistan’s nuclear program (see June 2, 1981). However, the communication contains information the US must know to be untrue. The cable says, “We believe that the Pakistanis have so far been unable to make their centrifuge machines work and that they have not yet produced any significant quantities of enriched uranium.” Authors Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark will say this is a “blatant lie,” as the US knows the opposite is true. The cable concludes, “Even if the Pakistanis do manage to eventually overcome their problems in the enrichment area, it would likely take them a few years of successful operations to produce sufficient fissile material to fabricate a single device.” It also estimates that it will take Pakistan another decade before it has a suitable missile system to go with warheads. Levy and Scott-Clark will add, “Not only was the US misrepresenting the available intelligence, but it was also ignoring several articles published by Khan himself in Western nuclear gazettes in which he had explicitly laid out the hurdles his centrifuge construction program had overcome.” Moshe Ya’alon, later head of Israeli military intelligence, will say that the Israelis are stunned by this response. “The US was glib on Pakistan,” he will add. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 85-86]

Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin calls televangelist and nascent political ally Jerry Falwell (see 1980) and says: “Tomorrow you’re going to read some strange things about what we’re going to do. But our safety is at stake. I wanted you, my good friend, to know what we are going to do.” Israel is preparing to use US-provided F-16s to destroy Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor (see June 7, 1981). Begin is concerned that the US will object to Israel’s use of the aircraft for non-defensive purposes. Falwell tells Begin, “I want to congratulate you for a mission that [makes] us very proud that we manufactured those F-16s.” Many Reagan officials are not happy that Israel violated the agreement with the US over use of the warplanes, but even though Vice President Bush and Chief of Staff James Baker both believe that Israel should be punished, Begin has provided himself cover on the Christian right. [Unger, 2007, pp. 109-110]

Osirak nuclear facility. [Source: GlobalSecurity.org] (click image to enlarge)On the order of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and after heated debate among Israeli leaders, Israeli warplanes strike the Osirak (also spelled Osiraq) Tammuz I nuclear plant at al-Tuwaitha near Baghdad, destroying it and dealing a severe setback to Iraq’s nuclear program. Israel claims it fears Iraq is building a nuclear weapon with which to strike it. Osirak is a French-made nuclear reactor, which is near completion but lacks any nuclear fuel, thereby raising no danger of any radioactive link. Ariel Sharon, concurrently Defense Minister and a proponent of the strike, later says, “This was perhaps the most difficult decision which faced any [Israeli] government during all the years of the state’s existence.” The Israeli government states after the strike, “The atomic bombs which that reactor was capable of producing, whether from enriched uranium or from plutonium, would be of the Hiroshima size. Thus a mortal danger to the people of Israel progressively arose.… Under no circumstances will we allow an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction against our people.” The reactor is slated to be completed by September, 1981, though it would be years before it could produce any nuclear-grade fissionable material. Iraq denies the reactor is developed to produce nuclear weapons, though the construction of the plant gives credence to claims that Iraq is more interested in building a weapon than generating electricity. (After the strike, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein says, “Any state in the world which really wants peace… should help the Arabs in one way or another to acquire atomic bombs,” giving further credence to suspicions that Hussein wanted to build a nuclear weapon.) The Israeli strike follows up a September 1980 raid on the Osirak facility by Iranian warplanes (see September 30, 1980). Publicly, Iran and Israel are dire enemies, but Israel has begun secretly selling US-made arms to Iran as a way to counterbalance the threat posed by Iraq (see 1981). [BBC, 7/7/1981; New Yorker, 11/2/1992; Institute for Strategic Studies, 5/1995] In 1984, Brookings Institution fellow Lucien Vandenbroucke will write, “Ironically, Israel’s raid may prove to be a brilliant tactical success achieved at the expense of the country’s long-term interests. Certainly, the attack set Iraq’s nuclear program back several years. But the strike also ushered in a de facto Israeli claim to nuclear monopoly in the Middle East, a move that in the long run generally promises to encourage the larger Arab world on the nuclear path.… In the decision-making process, Israeli fears and the propensity to rely on worst-case analyses seem to have prevailed. The advocates of the strike focused on the unreasonable, rather than the reasonable, aspects of Iraqi behavior, and thus even a limited prospect that Iraq might soon acquire a nuclear bomb became more of a risk than they were prepared to accept.” [GlobalSecurity (.org), 10/1984]

The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad sends a letter bomb to Albrecht Migule, an associate of A. Q. Khan who had helped build fluoride and uranium conversion plants for Pakistani in 1979. It is not known whether the bomb explodes or what damage it does, but Migule survives, only to be fined by the German authorities for his dealings with Khan. The bomb is part of a campaign by Mossad targeting members of Khan’s nuclear proliferation network (see Early 1981). [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 88, 118]

Zvi Rafiah leaves his post in Washington and takes a job with Israel’s largest defense company, Israeli Military Industries (IMI). IMI is said to have the second largest payroll in Israel and to be “inextricably entwined with the military and security apparatus of the Jewish state.” [Crile, 2003, pp. 99, 141] An FBI investigation identified Rafiah as a likely Mossad agent and Stephen Bryen, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer and a close associate of Richard Perle, was regularly passing classified material to him (see March 1978).

Douglas Feith, a neoconservative (see Early 1970s) serving as a Middle East analyst for the National Security Council, is fired after becoming the focus of an FBI inquiry into his giving classified NSC information to an Israeli embassy official in Washington. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004] (Feith has always been a hardline advocate for Israel; his father, Dalck Feith, was a hardline Republican who, in his youth, was active in the militant Zionist youth movement Betar, the predecessor of Israel’s Likud Party. Both Feith and his father will be honored by the hard-right, Likud-aligned Zionist Organization of America.) [Inter Press Service, 11/7/2003] In 1992, Feith will write of his belief that the US and Israel should freely share technology; author Stephen Green will write regarding Feith’s leak of classified information to Israel that “what [Feith] had neglected to say… was that he thought that individuals could decide on their own whether the sharing of classified information was ‘technical cooperation,’ an unauthorized disclosure, or a violation of US Code 794c, the ‘Espionage Act.’” Feith is almost immediately rehired by fellow neoconservative Richard Perle to serve as Perle’s “special counsel” (see Mid-1982); Feith will work for Perle until 1986, when he forms what Green will call “a small but influential law firm… based in Israel.” [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

In November 1982, US Representative Charlie Wilson (D-TX) travels to Islamabad, Pakistan, and meets with President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. He promises Zia to deliver a crucial weapons system that has so far been denied by the US—the latest radar systems for Pakistan’s F-16 fighter planes. Wilson also meets with CIA Station Chief Howard Hart, who is in charge of providing support for the Afghan resistance to the Soviets. He urges Hart to expand the program and stresses that vast amounts of money can be made available. [Crile, 2003, pp. 106-129] The next month, President Zia comes to the US to meet with President Reagan. Zia first meets with Wilson in Houston and expresses his gratitude for helping Pakistan acquire F-16 radar systems (see November-December 1982). Wilson then broaches the subject of Pakistan secretly purchasing arms from Israel for the Afghan War. Zia agrees to this in principle. [Crile, 2003, pp. 131-132]

Neoconservative academic Michael Ledeen is brought into the Defense Department as a consultant on terrorism, via the auspices of Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, a fellow neoconservative. Ledeen’s supervisor, Noel Koch, is troubled by Ledeen’s frequent visits to his office to read classified documents. When Koch and Ledeen journey to Italy on Pentagon business, Koch learns that Ledeen is considered an “agent of influence” for a foreign government: Israel. After returning from Italy, Ledeen asks Koch to help him obtain two highly classified CIA reports which he says are being held by the FBI. Ledeen gives Koch the reports’ “alpha numeric designators”—numbers as highly classified as the reports themselves. Koch is at a loss to understand how Ledeen obtained such information. Koch tells his executive assistant to stop allowing Ledeen to access the classified materials in his office. In return, Ledeen stops coming to work. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004] Shortly thereafter, Ledeen will begin “consulting work” for the National Security Council (see Late 1984).

Representative Charlie Wilson (D-TX) travels to Israel where he meets with Zvi Rafiah and other Israeli officials. From Israel he travels to Egypt and then Pakistan, where he secretly negotiates a major weapons deal with Pakistan (see November-December 1982) on behalf of the Israelis in support of the mujaheddin fighting Soviets in Afghanistan. Among other things, the deal includes the delivery of T-55 tanks. Author George Crile will later comment, “The Israelis were hoping this deal would serve as the beginning of a range of under-the-table understandings with Pakistan that the congressman would continue to quietly negotiate for them.” [Crile, 2003, pp. 141]

Jack Rugh, the acting assistant director of the Office of Management Information Systems Support at the Justice Department’s Executive Office for US Attorneys, writes a memo turning over the PROMIS application to a colleague, C. Madison Brewer. The application is for passage to the government of Israel, a transfer already discussed by Brewer and Rugh (see May 6, 1983). Rugh writes: “Enclosed are the PROMIS materials that you asked me to produce for Dr. Ben Orr of the government of Israel. These materials consist of the LEM DEC PDP 11/70 version of PROMIS on magnetic tape along with the printed specifications for that tape, as well as two printed volumes of PROMIS documentation for the LEAA version of the system.” [US Congress, 9/10/1992]

By his own account, Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe runs a covert Israeli arms network, primarily supplying weapons to the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran for use in the Iran-Iraq War. Huge profits are made. “At various times the fund reached peaks of more than $1 billion,” he later explains in his book, Profits of War. “At its height it stood at $1.8 billion.… Between 1984 and 1989 no less than $160 million was funneled to [Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Shamir’s [Likud] faction.” He also says that the money helped finance the intelligence community’s “black” operations including “Israeli-controlled ‘Palestinian terrorists’ who would commit crimes in the name of the Palestinian revolution but were actually pulling them off, usually unwittingly, as part of the Israeli propaganda machine.” The Israeli government will later deny that Menashe had any association with their intelligence services. But faced with evidence, the government will change its story, alleging that he was only a low-level translator who had taken to freelancing arms deals. However, Ben-Menashe is able to produce strong evidence to support his version of events and his 1991 trial in New York will culminate in his acquittal on the grounds that the jury disbelieves the Israeli government’s denials. [Ben-Menashe, 1992, pp. 120; Consortium News, 1997; Coll, 2004, pp. 120]

The US State Department briefs Donald Rumsfeld, who is preparing to make another visit to Baghdad (see March 26, 1984). In a memo to Rumsfeld, Secretary of State George Shultz laments that relations with Iraq have soured because of the State Department’s March 5 condemnation (see March 5, 1984) of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons and expresses considerable concern over the future of the Aqaba pipeline project [to be built by Bechtel (see December 2, 1983)] which the US is pushing. Shultz writes: “Two event have worsened the atmosphere in Baghdad since your last stop there in December: (1) Iraq has only partly repulsed the initial thrust of a massive Iranian invasion, losing the strategically significant Majnun Island oil fields and accepting heavy casualties; (2) Bilateral relations were sharply set back by our March 5 condemnation of Iraq for CW [chemical weapons] use, despite our repeated warnings that this issue would emerge [as a public issue] sooner or later. Given its wartime preoccupations and its distress at our CW statement, the Iraqi leadership probably will have little interest in discussing Lebanon, the Arab-Israeli conflict, or other matters except as they may impinge on Iraq’s increasingly desperate struggle for survival. If Saddam or Tariq Aziz receives you against consider, and to reject, a pending application from Westinghouse to participate in a $160 million portion of a $1 billion Hyundai thermal power plant project in Iraq, this decision will only confirm Iraqi perceptions that ExIm [Export-Import Bank] financing for the Aqaba pipeline is out of the question. Eagleburger tried to put this perception to a rest, however, emphasizing to Kittani the administration’s firm support for the line (see March 15, 1984). The door is not yet closed to ExIm or other USG [US government] financial assistance to this project….” At the very end of the cable, it is noted that “Iraq officials have professed to be at a loss to explain our actions as measured against our stated objectives. As with our CW statement, their temptation is to give up rational analysis and retreat to the line that US policies are basically anti-Arab and hostage to the desires of Israel.” [US Department of State, 3/24/1984 ; Vallette, 3/24/2003]

NSC Middle East analyst Donald Fortier writes to his boss, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, of his concerns that NSC consultant Michael Ledeen (see Late 1984) might be a risk for passing classified information to Israel (see 1983). According to Fortier, NSC staffers agree that Ledeen’s role in the secret hostage negotiations with Iran should be limited to ferrying messages to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres regarding Israel’s role in the negotiations, and Ledeen should specifically not be entrusted to ask Peres for detailed operational information. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

Michael Ledeen, a neoconservative author who consults for the National Security Council (see Late 1984), meets informally with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. Ledeen tells Peres that the Reagan administration will quietly support Israeli arms shipments to Iran. [New York Times, 11/19/1987]

Secretary of State George Shultz writes to National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane that “Israel’s record of dealings with Iran since the fall of the Shah and during the hostage crisis [shows] that Israel’s agenda is not the same as ours.” Referring to the plan concocted by NSC staffer Oliver North and North’s consultant, neoconservative and likely Israeli spy Michael Ledeen (see 1983), to seek Israeli help in freeing the American hostages in Lebanon (see Late 1984 and April 9, 1985), Shultz writes, “Consequently doubt whether an intelligence relationship such as what Ledeen has in mind would be one which we could fully rely upon and it could seriously skew our own perception and analysis of the Iranian scene.” [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

David Kimche. [Source: Mark Leighton / Bettmann / Corbis]David Kimche, the director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, meets secretly with National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane to advise him that Israel may be able to use its influence with Iran (see 1981) to engineer the release of American hostages currently held by Hezbollah. Kimche’s outreach is the final piece in the complex arms-for-hostage deal between the US, Israel, and Iran. [New Yorker, 11/2/1992] Israel is a logical conduit for arms to Iran, as it has been selling arms to Iran periodically since 1979, originally as part of its efforts to get Iran to allow Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel. Like the US, Israel hopes to gain influence with Iranian moderates who will presumably take power after the aged, ailing Islamist radical Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini dies. (Earlier attempts to sell US-made arms to Iran had been blocked by the Carter administration.) According to Israeli sources, this Israeli offer began with a group of Israeli businessmen informing Prime Minister Shimon Peres in early July that they had been in contact with Iranian officials, and thought they could facilitate an arrangement to swap US arms for American hostages. The Israelis say that the US point man for the deal is John Poindexter, the deputy national security adviser, and Poindexter tapped National Security Council aide Oliver North to be the US liaison to Israel. Peres quickly authorized the Israeli businessmen to resume their contacts with the Iranians, and the businessmen contacted Saudi arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi. Khashoggi obtained a long list of desired military equipment from the Iranians, including Hawk antiaircraft missiles and radar-guidance equipment for them, antitank missiles, and spare parts for jet fighters. [Time, 11/17/1986]

Israeli representatives meet with Iranian arms merchant Manucher Ghorbanifar for the first time, to discuss brokering the secret US-Iranian arms deals authorized by President Reagan (see July 18, 1985). Israel will sell arms to Iran, and the US will replenish Israeli stockpiles. [PBS, 2000]

A major meeting to codify the arms-for-hostage deal with Iran takes place in Ronald Reagan’s private White House quarters, after Iranian officials sent requests to open negotiations with the US through backchannel sources. Reagan, recovering from intestinal surgery and wearing pajamas and a bathrobe, is joined by Vice President Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, White House chief of staff Donald Regan, and National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane. McFarlane, passing along information he has received from Israel (see 1981), says the Iranians will see to it that Hezbollah releases four American hostages in return for US and Israeli arms. McFarlane has long supported arms sales to Iran, and is most supportive of the deal; Weinberger and Shultz, who support dealing with Iraq, are firmly against it. But the deal will go through (see September 15, 1985). [Time, 11/17/1986; New Yorker, 11/2/1992]

Benjamin Weir. [Source: Santa Clara University]The first arms-for-hostage deal between Iran and the US is completed (see August 6, 1985). On August 30, Israel sold over 500 US-made TOW anti-tank missiles to Iran. Now Iran frees the Reverend Benjamin Weir, an American kidnapped over a year before in Lebanon. White House officials hope for further hostage releases, but none are forthcoming. [New Yorker, 11/2/1992] Ronald Reagan will telephone Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres to thank him for Israel’s help in securing Weir’s freedom. The TOW missiles will be delivered to Iran on September 20, in the cargo hold of a DC-8 transport plane once owned by a Miami-based air transport company; the aircraft took off from Tabriz, Iran, disappeared from radar screens over Turkey, made what was supposed to be a “forced landing” in Israel and later returned to Iran by a circuitous route. [Time, 11/17/1986]

Oliver North, the National Security Council staffer who handles the Iran-Contra dealings, tells Israeli Defense Ministry officials that he plans to use profits from future arms sales to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. [New York Times, 11/19/1987] North will not inform his supervisor, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, for five more months (see May 29, 1986).

Outgoing National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and National Security Council staffer Oliver North fly to London to meet with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms merchant. Also present at the meeting are David Kimche, of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, and Israeli arms dealer Yaacov Nimrodi. McFarlane tells Ghorbanifar that the US wants to end arms sales to Iran, though the US wants to continue pursuing diplomatic relations. [New York Times, 11/19/1987] The US will in actuality continue selling arms to Iran (see January 7, 1986 and January 17, 1986).

Defense Department official Noel Koch arranges to discuss a matter of potential espionage with the FBI. Koch is worried that his former aide, neoconservative Michael Ledeen, has access to highly classified information in his role as a National Security Council consultant (see Late 1984 and May 3, 1985). Koch feels that Ledeen had possibly given classified information to Israel during his tenure at the Defense Department (see 1983). Koch is debriefed for two hours by FBI investigators, who tell him that they are only worried about possible Soviet espionage. Koch wonders at this, considering that Naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard had been arrested just months before and charged with espionage on behalf of Israel. A frustrated Koch writes up his knowledge of Ledeen’s actions at the Defense Department and sends the report to Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Nothing concrete comes from Koch’s attempts to alert the FBI and Congress to potential espionage by Ledeen. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

National Security Council official Oliver North writes to National Security Adviser John Poindexter that his aide, consultant Michael Ledeen, may be illegally profiting from the sale of arms to Iran through Israel (see June 23-25, 1987). [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

Robert McFarlane. [Source: Shelly Katz / Time Life / Getty Images]A delegation secretly sent to Iran by the White House to break the arms-for-hostages deadlock (see November 3, 1986) returns to Iran. The two countries have been at an impasse since January, when President Reagan authorized the sale of 4,000 antitank missiles to Iran but US officials insisted that all of the American hostages held by Hezbollah be freed before the missiles would be delivered, a condition the Iranians have refused (see January 17, 1986). The US delegation—actually the third such delegation to secretly visit Tehran—includes former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane; McFarlane’s longtime supporter and current National Security Council member Oliver North; CIA expert George Cave; and North’s NSC colleague, Howard Teicher. Israel, which will facilitate the arms transfer, sends Amiram Nir, a counterterrorism adviser to Prime Minister Shimon Peres. [Time, 11/17/1986; New Yorker, 11/2/1992] McFarlane and North bring with them more spare parts for Iran’s Hawk anti-aircraft missiles. They attempt, and fail, to persuade the Iranians to facilitate the release of all American hostages. [New York Times, 11/19/1987] The delegation’s mission has borne no fruit, as the Iranians insisted on “sequencing,” or releasing the hostages two at a time as arms shipments were delivered. Part of the problem surrounds the Iranians’ belief that they are being charged outrageous prices for the missiles, a perception given credence by the fact that profits from the weapons sales are being used to fund Nicaragua’s Contra rebel movement. [Time, 11/17/1986; New Yorker, 11/2/1992]Unusual Negotiation Tactics - Part of the negotiations involves North, the NSC staffer who coordinates the administration’s dealings with the Contras, offering the Iranians a Bible signed by President Reagan and a chocolate cake. In response, the Iranians stall. Hezbollah will release a few US hostages and take others hostage, maintaining the status quo. [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 65]Explicit Briefing of President, Vice President - McFarlane later briefs both Reagan and Vice President Bush on the arms-for-hostage negotiations (see May 29, 1986).

Vice President Bush meets with several national leaders during his trip to the Middle East (see July 28-August 3, 1986). Ostensibly Bush is visiting the region to “advance the peace process,” but in reality his trip has three reasons: to raise his own public profile as an experienced hand in foreign relations for his upcoming presidential bid, to negotiate for the release of US hostages held by Iran, and to secretly pressure Iraq to increase its bombing of Iran to aid in those negotiations. Meeting with the Israelis - Bush meets briefly with Amiram Nir in Jerusalem. Nir, a close friend of Oliver North’s and a counterterrorism adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, meets with Bush at North’s behest. Bush will later characterize his meeting with Nir as “generally about counterterrorism,” and will admit obliquely that the two did have “some discussion of arms sales as a means to ‘reach out to moderate elements’ in the Iranian government. Arms sales would ‘establish bona fides’ with the moderate element, who ‘might use their influence with the people who were holding the hostages.’” However, the meeting is later described very differently by others, including Craig Fuller, Bush’s chief of staff, who is present at the meeting; according to Fuller, the two discuss the arms-for-hostages deal in great detail, including specifics about what arms will be delivered, and both are ready to negotiate with the Islamic radicals of the Khomeini regime who control the American hostages. The hostages are to be released in a group in return for 4,000 US-made antitank missiles. Nir himself reports the contents of the meeting to Peres, and his later account of it is virtually identical to Fuller’s. Nir also notes that his biggest question—how to get the Iranians to release the hostages all at once and not one or two at a time—went unanswered by Bush. “The [vice president] made no commitments nor did he give any direction to Nir,” Fuller notes. Meeting with King Hussein - Bush then flies to Jordan to meet with King Hussein. Their meeting has an element not divulged to the press: Hussein has often been used as an intermediary between Reagan officials and Iraq. The CIA uses Jordan as a conduit to pass intelligence to Iraq, with the Jordanian involvement providing critical “deniability.” Bush tells the king that Iraq needs to be more aggressive in its war with Iran if it wants to win the war, and tells Hussein to tell the Iraqis to use its air force more expansively. Hussein promises to pass the message along. Meeting with Mubarak - Bush then jets to Egypt to meet with its president, Hosni Mubarak. Reporters note that Bush tells Mubarak that the US cannot increase aid to Egypt. They are unaware that Bush asks Mubarak to pass along the same message that he has asked of King Hussein: to exhort Iraq to step up its air war against Iran. By the time Bush speaks with Mubarak, the NSA, monitoring Jordanian-Iraqi communications, learns that Hussein has already passed along the message. The talking points for Bush’s meeting with Mubarak are authored by Teicher. [New Yorker, 11/2/1992; Affidavit. United States v. Carlos Cardoen, et al. [Charge that Teledyne Wah Chang Albany illegally provided a proscribed substance, zirconium, to Cardoen Industries and to Iraq], 1/31/1995 ; MSNBC, 8/18/2002]

Vice President Bush, secretly planning to ask Iraq to increase its bombing of Iran in order to give the US more leverage in its hostage negotiations with Iran (see July 23, 1986), leaves for the Middle East on July 28. The trip is given a public face as an attempt by Bush to, as he tells reporters, “advance the peace process.” His political handlers, already thinking about the 1988 presidential elections, want to increase his public stature as a potential world leader. Bush is accompanied by his wife Barbara, a platoon of reporters, and a television crew hired by his political action committee to document the trip for future campaign purposes. But his staffers play down the possible impact of the trip. “This is not a trip designed to establish new breakthroughs,” says one Bush adviser. “It’s like tending a garden. If you don’t tend the garden, the weeds grow up. And I think there are a lot of weeds in that garden.” Much of the trip, such as the visit to Jordan, is planned primarily as a series of photo opportunities, with Bush’s PR team even exhorting the Jordanians to feature camels in each shot (camels are few in Jordan). Hostage Break - Bush learns while still in flight that an American hostage, the Reverend Lawrence Jenco, has just been released by his Hezbollah captors, most likely at the behest of the Iranians (see January 8, 1985). Jenco’s release, according to reporters Murray Waas and Craig Unger, is “a measure of Iran’s deep ambivalence about the negotiations. Iran need[s] weapons and [does] not want the deal to die. At the same time, the Iranians [a]re apoplectic because, according to their estimates, they were being overcharged by six hundred per cent [for US weapons], and they had not yet received parts for two hundred and forty Hawk missiles.” Jenco’s release is in return for the US expediting the shipment of the missile parts. [New Yorker, 11/2/1992; Affidavit. United States v. Carlos Cardoen, et al. [Charge that Teledyne Wah Chang Albany illegally provided a proscribed substance, zirconium, to Cardoen Industries and to Iraq], 1/31/1995 ; MSNBC, 8/18/2002]Effectiveness of the Message - Bush meets with several regional leaders, including Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak (see July 28-August 3, 1986). In the 48 hours following the meeting with Mubarak, Iraq launches 359 air strikes against Iran, including numerous strikes far deeper into Iran than it has done before. Apparently the message was effective. In return, while Bush is still “advancing the peace process,” the CIA begins providing the Iraqis with highly classified tactical information about Iranian military movements and strike targets. Evidently Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, previously suspicious of US motives and advice, felt more confident in the battle strategies advocated by such a high-level US official. When Bush returns to Washington on August 5, he is debriefed by Casey. According to one Casey aide, “Casey kept the return briefing very close to his vest. But he said Bush was supportive of the initiative and had carried out his mission.” [New Yorker, 11/2/1992]

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. [Source: GlobalSecurity.org]The Lebanese weekly Al Shiraa publishes an article reporting that the US has been sending spare parts and ammunition for US-made jet fighters to Iran in return for Iran facilitating the release of American hostages held by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah (see September 15, 1985). It also reports that national security adviser Robert McFarlane and four other US officials, including his aide Oliver North, visited Tehran in September 1986 and met with several high-level Iranian officials, who asked for more US military equipment (see Late May, 1986). After the meeting, the report says, four C-130 transports airlifted the arms to Iran from a US base in the Philippines. The flight of the transports has never been confirmed, but the rest of the report is essentially factual. It is unclear where Al Shiraa got its information; the publication has close ties to Syrian officials, and it is possible that the Syrians leaked the information in order to destabilize any possible thawing of relations between the US and Iran, perhaps with an eye to increasing Syria’s own influence in Iran. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, quickly confirms McFarlane’s visit, but adds elements to the story that many from all sides of the issue find hard to believe, including claims that McFarlane and his companions used Irish passports to enter Iran, and were posing as the flight crew of a plane carrying military equipment Iran had purchased from international arms dealers. Rafsanjani claims that McFarlane and his companions brought gifts of a Bible signed by Ronald Reagan, a cake shaped like a key (to symbolize an opening of better relations between Iran and the US), and a number of Colt pistols to be given to Iranian officials. Rafsanjani says that he and other Iranian officials were outraged at the visit, kept McFarlane and his party under virtual house arrest for five days, and threw them out, sparking the following complaint from McFarlane: “You are nuts. We have come to solve your problems, but this is how you treat us. If I went to Russia to buy furs, [Mikhail] Gorbachev would come to see me three times a day.” US officials say that Rafsanjani’s embellishments are sheer invention designed to humiliate the US and bolster Iran’s perception around the world. They confirm that McFarlane, North, and two bodyguards did visit Tehran, but bore neither Bible, cake, nor pistols; they did stay in Tehran four or five days, and met with numerous Iranian officials, perhaps including Rafsanjani. The officials are unclear about exactly what was accomplished, though apparently no new deals were concluded. US Arms Deals with Iran Revealed - Though Rafsanjani’s account may be fanciful in its details, the effect of the Al Shiraa report is to blow the cover off of the US’s complex arms-for-hostage deals with Iran. While Al Shiraa does not mention the hostage deal, Rafsanjani does, saying that if the US and France meet certain conditions—the unfreezing of Iranian financial assets and the release of what he calls political prisoners held “in Israel and other parts of the world,” then “as a humanitarian gesture we will let our friends in Lebanon know our views” about the release of American and French hostages. On November 17, Time magazine will write of the Al Shiraa revelation, “As long as the deep secret was kept—even from most of the US intelligence community—the maneuver in one sense worked. Iran apparently leaned on Lebanese terrorists to set free three American hostages… . But once the broad outlines of the incredible story became known, the consequences were dire. The administration appeared to have violated at least the spirit, and possibly the letter, of a long succession of US laws that are intended to stop any arms transfers, direct or indirect, to Iran. Washington looked to be sabotaging its own efforts to organize a worldwide embargo against arms sales to Iran, and hypocritically flouting its incessant admonitions to friends and allies not to negotiate with terrorists for the release of their captives. America’s European allies, the recipients of much of that nagging, were outraged. Moreover, the US was likely to forfeit the trust of moderate Arab nations that live in terror of Iranian-fomented Islamic fundamentalist revolutions and fear anything that might build up Tehran’s military machine. Finally, the administration seemed to have lost at least temporarily any chance of gaining the release of the missing six US hostages in Lebanon, or of cultivating the Iranian politicians who might sooner or later take over from [the Ayatollah] Khomeini.” [Time, 11/17/1986; New York Times, 11/19/1987; New Yorker, 11/2/1992]'Cowboy' Operation in the West Wing - The arms-for-hostages deal is run from the National Security Council by a small group of NSC staffers under the supervision of North; the group is collectively known as the “cowboys.” A government official says in November 1986, “This thing was run out of the West Wing [of the White House]. It was a vest-pocket, high-risk business.”

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin forms Hamas as the military arm of his Islamic Association, which had been licensed by Israel ten years earlier (see 1973-1978). According to Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, “Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO.” [CounterPunch, 1/18/2003; Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 191, 208] Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies, states that Israel “aided Hamas directly—the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO.” A former senior CIA official speaking to UPI describes Israel’s support for Hamas as “a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative.” Further, according to an unnamed US government official, “the thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the other groups, if they gained control, would refuse to have anything to do with the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place.” Larry Johnson, a counterterrorism official at the State Department, states: “The Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism. They are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer. They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it.” [United Press International, 2/24/2001Sources:Larry C. Johnson, Unnamed former CIA official]

Soon after people involved in the A. Q. Khan nuclear proliferation ring start to meet with Iranian representatives (see 1987 and 1987), Israeli intelligence becomes aware of these contacts. Authors Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark will comment that the Israeli intelligence community studies “the Pakistan-Iran nuclear pact since its inception in 1987.” One of the key elements in the Israeli effort is Unit 8200, an intelligence component of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which will crack the encryption used in communications between Pakistan and Iran at some point in the next few years. The intercepts suggest that Pakistan may have given the Iranians what Levy and Scott-Clark will call “a nuclear weapons factory.” Future IDF chief Moshe Ya’alon will say of the period in the mid-90s: “Pakistan was broke. Khan was flying around the world alongside his military escort. Our people overheard him dealing and many of these deals came back to Iran, to whom he was offering KRL stock.” [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 256]

Neoconservative academics and authors Laurie Mylroie and Daniel Pipes write an article for the New Republic entitled “Back Iraq: Time for a US Tilt in the Mideast.” Mylroie and Pipes argue that the US must publicly embrace Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship as a bulwark against the Islamic fundamentalism of Iran. Backing Iraq “could lay the basis for a fruitful relationship” that would benefit US and Israeli interests, they write. They believe Washington should move to a closer relationship with Hussein because Iraq holds a more moderate view of Israel and the US than other countries in the Middle East. “The American weapons that Iraq could make good use of include remotely scatterable and anti-personnel mines and counterartillery radar.” Mylroie and Pipes argue not just for weapons sales to Iraq, but for the US to share intelligence with that nation: “The United States might also consider upgrading intelligence it is supplying Baghdad.” Mylroie and Pipes are apparently uninterested in the stories of Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against both Iranians and his own citizens (see March 5, 1984, March 1988, and August 25, 1988). After the 9/11 attacks, Mylroie will change her opinion and join the call for Hussein’s overthrow, blaming him for a raft of terror attacks going back to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (see 1990, October 2000, and September 12, 2001). [New Republic, 4/27/1987 ; CounterPunch, 8/13/2003; Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 68]

Testimony in the Iran-Contra investigations turns to the possibility that NSC aide Michael Ledeen may have profited from the US sales of arms to Iran through Israel (see January 24, 1986). Ledeen’s former supervisor at the Department of Defense, Noel Koch, who has long suspected Ledeen of spying for Israel (see 1983 and 1986), says that he first became suspicious of Ledeen when he learned that the price Ledeen had negotiated for the sale to the Israeli government of basic TOW missiles was $2,500 each. Koch found that no TOW missile had ever been sold to any foreign government for less than $6,800 per unit. Under orders from his superiors in the department, Koch renegotiated the deal with an Israeli official, eventually raising the price to $4,500 per missile, almost twice what Ledeen had “negotiated” in Israel. Author Stephen Green, who will write two books on US-Israeli relations, will comment, “There are two possibilities here—one would be a kickback, as suspected by his NSC colleagues, and the other would be that Michael Ledeen was effectively negotiating for Israel, not the US.” [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

Dr. Stephen Bryen, a neoconservative serving in the Defense Department who dodged espionage charges a decade before (see March 1978 and April 1979), helps Israel obtain secret US weapons information. Israel is in the final stages of building its “Arrow” anti-ballistic missile. It does not have “klystrons,” small microwave amplifiers needed for the missile’s target acquisition system to function. Klystrons are among the most secret of American weapons research products. Bryen is the director of the Pentagon’s Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA), which itself is contained within the Pentagon’s Office of International Security Policy, headed by fellow neoconservative Richard Perle. Bryen attempts to secure the authority to allow four klystrons to be exported to Israel via Varian Associates, a private defense manufacturing firm, without consulting with tech transfer officials from the Army, the Air Force, or other agencies. Navy tech transfer official Richard Levine refuses the request, and holds a meeting with officials from the above agencies. All the officials agree that the transfer should not be approved. Bryen responds by suggesting that he go back to the Israelis to ask why they needed the klystrons. After the Israelis provide what one Defense Department official later calls “a little bullsh_t answer,” Bryen tells the participants that he had received an acceptable response. Varien is granted a license, he says, and the klystrons will be sent to Israel. The license is withdrawn after Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Richard Armitage, objects to Bryen’s maneuvering. Two senior Defense Department officials later say that the attempt to provide Israel with classified weapons materials is “standard operating procedure” for Bryen, who has often ignored Defense and State Department refusals to provide sensitive information and materials to Israel. Later in the year, Bryen will leave the government and work as a consultant for a number of defense technology firms. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

Secretary of State James Baker tells President Bush that Israel has to negotiate with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Two weeks later, Baker urges Israel to withdraw its troops from the Palestinian territories it occupies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel must, he says, “lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of the greater Israel.” Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, the right-wing leader of the Likud Party, is furious (see April 6, 1989). [Unger, 2007, pp. 113]

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir tells an audience at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute that he would refuse to comply with the Bush administration’s request to withdraw its troops from the Palestinian territories it occupies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Trading land for peace—i.e. returning the Palestinian lands Israel conquered in the 1967 Six-Day War in return for political recognition and a promise of peace—“is a deception,” Shamir says. “If we leave, there will almost certainly be war.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 113]

Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, CIA Director William Webster acknowledges the West’s increasing dependency on Middle East oil. “I want to mention two key Middle East related issues that will continue to have a major impact on US interests,” he tells senators. “[One] Oil. Western dependence on Persian Gulf oil will rise dramatically. By the year 2000, gulf states will supply an estimated 40 percent of Western oil, up from about 30 percent today. Meanwhile, US dependence is expected to rise from about 10 percent to roughly 25 percent by the end of the decade. [Two] The Arab-Israeli peace process. If the peace process does not advance over the next several years, the Intifadah is likely to become more violent, terrorism will probably rise, and Arab pressure on the United States to impose a settlement will increase.” [US Congress, 1/23/1990]

Saddam Hussein, emboldened by President Bush’s continued support for his regime even as he develops chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons (see September 1989) and is gassing his own citizens (see August 25, 1988), boasts that he now has chemical weapons and will “burn half of Israel.” Additionally, Iraqi forces on manuevers in the southern part of the country are being told that they are training to attack Israel. Nevertheless, the White House blocks efforts by the Commerce Department to stop the flow of US technology to Iraq, even technology that is being used to develop weapons of mass destruction (see 1990 and July 18, 1990-August 1, 1990). One White House official explains, “The president does not want to single out Iraq.” US diplomat Joseph Wilson, the deputy chief of mission in Baghdad (see September 5, 1988 and After), will later write: “While we were concerned about the tensions in Iraq’s relations with Kuwait (see May 28-30, 1990 and July 17, 1990), we did not suspect that the southern military exercises were, in fact, a first signal of Iraq’s intention to invade that country. We were more worried that Saddam’s hard line toward Israel would further inflame Arab passions and contribute to making any lasting settlement between Israel and the Palestinians that much more difficult to achieve.” [New Yorker, 11/2/1992; Wilson, 2004, pp. 95]

Paul Wolfowitz, the neoconservative undersecretary of policy for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, promotes the export of advanced AIM-9M air-to-air missiles to Israel. This is discovered by a lengthy investigation by the Bush administration into the export of classified weapons technology to China. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, aware that Israel has already been caught selling an earlier version of the AIM missile to China in violation of a written agreement between Israel and the US, intervenes to stop the missile sales. Wolfowitz retains his position at the Defense Department until he and most of his neoconservative colleagues are turned out of the federal government by the onset of the Clinton administration. [CounterPunch, 2/28/2004]

Secret diplomatic meetings between Israel and Pakistan arranged by Turkish ambassador to Washington Baki Ilkin take place in Washington, DC. Congressman Charlie Wilson, who ten years earlier had brokered arms deals between Israel and Pakistan for the Afghan War (see 1983), is involved. [Ha'aretz, 2/18/2005]

The US Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the House Republican Research Committee concludes that by the end of 1991 there was a “98 percent certainty that Iran already had all [or virtually all] of the components required for two to three operational nuclear weapons [aerial bombs and SSM warheads] made with parts purchased in the ex-Soviet Muslim republics.” Shai Feldman, director of Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, will say in 1998 that he “didn’t give these reports credibility at the time,” and that it “seemed like the kind of information that the Iranian opposition put out.” He will also recall that at the time “everybody said there was no evidence of a warhead transfer.” [Jerusalem Post, 4/9/1998]

Rescue workers in the wreckage of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. [Source: Reuters / Corbis]Twenty-nine people are killed in the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The bombing levels the three-story building. Argentina, the US, and Israel will later accuse Hezbollah and its backer Iran, but provide little evidence. According to most media accounts and the US State Department’s annual report on terrorism, the bombing was the work of a Hezbollah suicide bomber who drove a truck into the building. [Los Angeles Times, 5/8/1992; Patterns of Global Terrorism, 4/30/1993; Fox News, 10/5/2007] However, a technical report ordered by Argentina’s Supreme Court will find that the bomb was placed inside the building: “Court official Guillermo Lopez said that the investigation had ascertained that the explosives had been located on the first floor of the diplomatic headquarters. ‘The engineers established, with 99 percent certainty, the exact location where the explosives were and the quantity that was used.’” That conclusion is angrily rejected by Israel. [NotiSur, 8/16/1996] The case remains unsolved. [Ha'aretz, 3/17/2008]

Dick Cheney and Colin Powell. [Source: Representational Pictures]The Defense Department issues a revised draft of its post-Cold War strategy, a “Defense Planning Guidance” (DPG) for the fiscal years 1994-1996, which abandons confrontational language from an earlier draft. The earlier draft said the US, as the world’s lone superpower, should prevent any other nation from challenging its dominance in Western Europe and East Asia (see February 18, 1992), and caused a public uproar when leaked to the press (see March 8, 1992). The revision is authorized by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs chairman General Colin Powell, and written by the original version’s co-author, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. The revision focuses on building alliances and using collective, internationalist military actions coordinated by the United Nations as “key feature[s]” of US strategy, elements not found in the earlier draft. Less Focus on Allies as Potential Threats - Many Pentagon officials were critical of the earlier draft’s assertion that the US should work to contain German and Japanese aspirations for regional leadership. The new draft does not see the ascension of foreign allies as a threat, though it does advocate the US retaining a leadership role in strategic deterrence and leading regional alliances; together, the two policies will deter hostile and non-democratic nations from seeking to dominate individual regions. More Focus on Economic Stability and Security Cooperation - The draft is the first document of its kind to note that while a strong defense is important, it is also important to level off military spending and increase economic and security cooperation for greater world stability. The new proposal emphasizes the importance of increased international military cooperation, and emphasizes cooperation with Russia, Ukraine, and other nations of the former Soviet Union in order to provide “security at lower costs with lower risks for all.” It retains the right of the US to act unilaterally if necessary. Support for Israel and Taiwan are considered key to US interests in the Middle East and East Asia, and a continued heavy US military presence in Europe will continue. The DPG continues to advocate a “base force” military of 1.6 million uniformed troops, and rejects Congressional calls for a greater “peace dividend” funded by deeper military cuts. The entire document is not made public, and parts of it are classified. [New York Times, 5/23/1992]'Sleight of Hand' - In 2008, author J. Peter Scoblic will write that Libby engaged in what he calls “a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand, making the document’s language more diplomatic while actually strengthening its substance, further emphasizing the role that military dominance would play in dissuading potential rivals.” According to Scoblic, “Those who read it closely would discover that Libby had emphasized American freedom of action, proposing that the United States act preemptively to shape ‘the future security environment’ and do so unilaterally if ‘international reaction proves sluggish or inadequate.” Cheney is so happy with the document that he asks for it to be released under his name, and tells the co-author of the original document, Zalmay Khalilzad, “You’ve discovered a new rationale for our role in the world.” [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 165-166]

El Al Flight LY1862, en route from New York to Tel Aviv, crashes into a block of apartment buildings shortly after take-off from Schiphol Airport, located south-east of Amsterdam. At least 43 people on the ground are killed (The exact number of deaths is unknown, since many of the incinerated victims were undocumented immigrants). Information about the plane’s cargo and the crash is suppressed: El Al withholds information about the plane’s several tons of “military cargo;” 12 hours of videotape made during the rescue and clean-up operation (42 cassettes in all), along with police audiotapes, are erased and shredded; and El Al documents and the plane’s cockpit voice recorder (CVR) mysteriously disappear. It is later learned that the plane, a Boeing 747, was carrying several tons of chemicals, including hydrofluoric acid, isopro-panol and dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP)—three of the four chemicals used in the production of sarin nerve gas. The shipment of chemicals—approved by the US commerce department—reportedly came from Solkatronic Chemicals Inc. of Morrisville, Pennsylvania and its final destination was the Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) in Ness Ziona near Tel Aviv, Israel, which is reported to be the “Israeli military and intelligence community’s front organization for the development, testing and production of chemical and biological weapons.” A former IIBR biologist later tells the London Sunday Times in October of 1998, “There is hardly a single known or unknown form of chemical or biological weapon… which is not manufactured at the institute.” In fact, it was IIBR that provided the poison and the antidote used in the attempted assassination of a Hamas leader in Jordan in 1998. The IIBR does not appear on any maps and is off-limits even to members of Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset. Israel denies that the chemicals were to be used in the production of chemical weapons and instead claims that they were needed to test gas masks. But as an article in Earth Island Journal notes: “[T]his explanation is puzzling since it only takes a few grams to conduct such tests. Once combined, the chemicals aboard Flight 1862 could have produced 270 kilos of sarin—sufficient to kill the entire population of a major world city.” During hearings on the crash in 1999, it is learned that since 1973, El Al planes are never inspected by customs or the Dutch Flight Safety Board and that El Al security at Schiphol is a branch of the Israeli Mossad. Furthermore, it is discovered that every Sunday evening a mysterious El Al cargo flight arrives at Schiphol en route from New York to Tel Aviv. The flights are never displayed on the airport arrival monitors and the flights’ documents are processed in a special, unmarked room. [BBC, 10/2/1998; Earth Island Journal, 1999; Covert Action Quarterly, 10/20/2004] Over a thousand residents living near the crash site later become sick with respiratory, neurological and mobility ailments and a rise in cancer and birth defects is later detected among the population. [ZNet, 10/12/2002]

Mohammad Salah. [Source: WGN-TV]In January 1993, Mohammad Salah, a Hamas operative living in the US (see 1989-January 1993), is arrested in the West Bank by the Israeli government on suspicion of transferring money to Hamas for guns and ammunition. News reports in February indicate that he is from Chicago and “had been found with more than $100,000 and plans from Hamas leaders in the United States.” Apparently, this causes Chicago FBI agent Robert Wright to begin investigating his fundraising activities (see After January 1993). Salah reportedly quickly confesses to directing certain Hamas military operations, organizing military cells, and to handling more than $1 million to purchase weapons. He names 23 organizations in the US that he says are helping to fund Hamas. He later will claim he was tortured into confessing. One of Salah’s associates is also arrested and reveals the existence of Hamas training camps in the US. Salah secretly will be tried by the Israeli government in 1994 and will plead guilty of the charges in 1995. He will be sentenced to five years in prison and released in 1997. [New York Times, 2/17/1993; Emerson, 2002, pp. 82-83; Federal News Service, 6/2/2003]

Israel’s ambassador to the US, Itamar Rabinovich, tells the influential US lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that Israel is prepared to make territorial concessions to the Palestinians as part of the soon-to-be-signed Oslo Accords (see September 13, 1993). The AIPAC members are stonily silent; soon after, AIPAC president Harvey Friedman calls Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yossi Beilin “a little slimeball” for helping make the land-for-peace deal. Though Friedman is asked to resign from AIPAC over his remarks, his message is clear: AIPAC is not so much pro-Israel as it is pro-Likud and in favor of that party’s hardline policies. Both the Israeli and US governments support trading land for peace, but US neoconservatives, and many members of Israel’s Likud Party, despise the policy. One of the most prominent US neoconservatives, Douglas Feith, currently a member of Rabinovich’s staff, is asked to leave his position because of his vocal opposition to the peace process. [Unger, 2007, pp. 121]

The famous handshake between Rabin and Arafat, with Clinton symbolically bringing the two together. [Source: Reuters]President Bill Clinton presides over the historic signing of the Oslo Accords, an overarching peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian people. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has agreed to give up large swaths of Palestinian territory Israel has occupied since 1967 in return for a Palestinian commitment to peace. Rabin is loathe to actually shake hands with his Palestinian counterpart, Yasser Arafat, in part because he knows the gesture would inflame extremists on both sides of the issue. But Clinton insists, and the two sign the accords and, symbolically embraced by Clinton, indeed shake hands. Clinton will later write, “All the world was cheering [the handshake], except the diehard protesters in the Middle East who were inciting violence, and demonstrators in front of the White House claiming we were endangering Israel’s security.” Those demonstrators include Christian fundamentalists, neoconservative ideologues, and Orthodox Jews. “Every grain of sand between the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to the Jews,” says US evangelist and Moral Majority co-founder Ed McAteer. “This includes the West Bank and Gaza.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 121-122]

Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Knesset. [Source: Neuhaus Nadav / Corbis Sygma]During the first Knesset debate on the Oslo peace accords (see September 13, 1993), Likud party chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, a close ally of US neoconservatives and Christian fundamentalists, compares the accords to British attempts to appease Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler before World War II. Referring to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, he shouts at Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, “You are worse than Chamberlain.” Netanyahu is so aggressive in part because he has the public and private support of influential US neoconservatives and Christian fundamentalists. “I was ambassador [to the US] for four years of the peace process, and the Christian fundamentalists were vehemently opposed to the peace process,” Israeli ambassador Itamar Rabinovich will recall (see July 1993). “They believed that the land belonged to Israel as a matter of divine right. So they immediately became part of a campaign by the Israeli right to undermine the peace process.” Netanyahu’s outburst on the floor of the Knesset is a deliberate part of this strategy. [Knesset Homepage, 2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 136]

Yitzhak Fhantich, the head of the Jewish Department of Israel’s intelligence service Shin Bet, opens a file on Yigal Amir (see September 13, 1993), an Israeli law student so outraged by the Oslo peace agreement (see September 13, 1993) that he has talked of “taking down” Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Amir “was a typical religious type,” Fhantich later recalls. “He served in a combat tour, and then went to study law. We knew about him.” Amir was raised in the tenets of haredi Judaism, the most theologically conservative branch of Orthodox Judaism. Amir was stunned by Rabin’s embrace of moderation and peace with the Palestinians—Rabin was once a commander of elite troops in Haganah, the Israeli paramilitary force, and during the 1967 Six-Day War, he led the assault force that retook the Temple Mount. Amir, who according to Fhantich is “fanatically against any compromise whatsoever with the Arabs,” believes that Rabin’s actions are both treasonous and heretical. Haredi Jews believe that Jewish religious law supersedes secular, governmental law, and to Amir and other strict Jewish fundamentalists, Rabin’s actions violate halachic laws forbidding giving Jewish properties to gentiles. [Unger, 2007, pp. 134-136]

Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli-American physician and protege of the extremist right-winger Rabbi Meir Kahane (see November 5, 1990), has been in a deep depression since Kahane’s assassination in 1990. After the signing of the Oslo Accords (see September 13, 1993), Goldstein decided that only an act of Kiddush ha-Shem—ritual self-sacrifice for the sanctification of God—can change history and return the world to what he sees as the pre-ordained path of Israeli domination of its traditional lands in the Middle East. Goldstein enters the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Israel, a sacred site for both Jews and Muslims. He is wearing his army uniform and carrying an assault rifle; worshipers assume he is a reserve officer on active duty coming to pray. Instead, Goldstein opens fire on a group of Palestinians praying there, killing 29 and wounding 150 more. Survivors eventually overcome Goldstein and beat him to death. The reaction among many right-wing Israelis, particularly in the outlying settlements, is ambivalent. Many deplore the violence but express sympathy for Goldstein’s desperation and theological anguish. The spokesman for the settlers’ rabbis committee says he sees no reason to condemn the murders. [Unger, 2007, pp. 136-137]

Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat goes to Gaza as outlined by the Oslo peace agreement (see September 13, 1993). The next day, as many as 100,000 right-wing protesters vent their spleen at Arafat, the peace process, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Jerusalem’s Zion Square, chanting, “Rabin is a homo!” and “Rabin is the son of a whore!” Near a huge banner reading “Death to Arafat,” Israeli Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu attacks the “blindness” of the Rabin administration for precipitating “the destruction of the Jewish state.” Netanyahu tells the crowd: “Arafat, who is personally responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews and non-Jews, this war criminal, is being hoisted aloft by the government of Israel.… What Arafat truly wants is not an Arab state beside Israel, but an Arab state in place of Israel.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 137]

Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan visits Syria. According to authors Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, he meets with “a senior Syrian government official” and is accompanied by a Pakistani army officer, apparently Brigadier Sajawal Khan Malik. The visit is monitored by Israeli intelligence. Moshe Ya’alon, later head of Israeli military intelligence, will say: “Khan had a menu with him. He was offering nuclear assistance. But we do not know if the deal went through. What we determined was that although Khan was intent on selling to Damascus, he was also keen to use Syria as a conduit to deliver nuclear assistance to Iran. Nobody was looking at Syria in those days from a nuclear perspective.” [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 256]

Forty militant Orthodox rabbis in Israel’s West Bank settlements, including Rabbi Eliezar Melamed, the secretary of the Rabbinical Council of the Land of Israel, begin deliberations to decide whether Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his “evil government” are in violation of that most fundamentalist of Jewish religious precepts, halachic law (see September 13, 1993). They discuss whether Rabin’s actions call into play two halachic edicts, a din rodef, the duty to kill a Jew who imperils the life or property of another Jew, and the din moser, the duty to eliminate a Jew who intends to turn another Jew over to non-Jewish authorities. A din moser is sometimes considered the Jewish equivalent of an Islamic fatwa. Most of these discussions take place in private, with no paper trail to provide evidence of the deliberations. [Unger, 2007, pp. 138]

Some of the most dire threats against Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (see Early 1995) come from Orthodox Jews in the US. Rabbi Abraham Hecht, a leader in New York City’s rabbinacal community, says that Jewish law permits the assassination off Rabin (see January 1995) for ceding land to the Palestinians (see September 13, 1993). [Unger, 2007, pp. 139]

Mousa Abu Marzouk. [Source: US Department of Corrections]On July 5, 1995, high-level Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk is detained at a New York City airport as he tries to enter the US. An immigration agent checks Marzouk’s name against a watch list and finds a match. Marzouk’s name had apparently been added to the watch list in recent months, so he had not been stopped on previous trips. Although not a US citizen, he had been living in the US for 14 years. Israel considers him the head of Hamas’ political wing, and he is already under indictment in Israel for at least ten attacks that killed at least 47 people. In 1994 he appeared on Lebanese television to take credit for a Hamas suicide attack in Israel, saying, “Death is a goal to every Muslim.” When he is detained in New York, he is found with an address book that the FBI says contains the names, telephone numbers, and addresses of numerous “active and violent terrorists and terrorist organizations.” More than 20 percent of the addresses are in the US. He is also carrying paperwork connecting him to charities and companies worth more than $10 million, which the FBI suspect are part of a Hamas money laundering operation in the US. On August 16, 1995, the US declares him a “Specially Designated Terrorist.” [New York Times, 7/28/1995; Emerson, 2002, pp. 86-87; Federal News Service, 6/2/2003; Wall Street Journal, 6/21/2004] In August 1995, the US announces it will extradite Marzouk to Israel rather than try him in the US. Extradition hearings proceed slowly until 1997, when Marzouk announces he will no longer fight being deported to Israel. Then Israel makes the surprise announcement that it is no longer seeking Marzouk’s extradition. They cite a fear of a highly publicized trial and the fear of retaliatory terrorist attacks. In May 1997, the US deports Marzouk to Jordan, “ending what had become an embarrassing case for both the United States and Israel.” Jordan in turn deports him to Syria, where he will live and continue to work as a top Hamas leader. At the time of his deportation, it is claimed that one reason Marzouk is being deported is because the evidence against him is weak. [New York Times, 4/4/1997; New York Times, 5/6/1997; Emerson, 2002, pp. 87-89] However, FBI agent Robert Wright will later claim that he uncovered more than enough evidence to convict Marzouk, but that higher-ups in the FBI did not want to disrupt the Hamas support network in the US, apparently in hopes that Hamas would commit enough violent attacks to disrupt peace negotiations between Israel and more moderate Palestinians (see June 2, 2003).

Israel’s Knesset approves Oslo II (see September 13, 1993), a complex set of agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) on the future of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. For Israeli law student Yigal Amir (see September 13, 1993), this is the last straw. He has already made three half-hearted attempts to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, but as of now he commits himself to carrying the deed through. For his part, Rabin continues to ignore warnings (see Early 1995) from Israeli intelligence and media reporters alike trying to alert him to the danger he is in from radical fundamentalists. [Unger, 2007, pp. 140]

The sheet with the lyrics to the ‘Song of Peace,’ stained with Rabin’s blood. [Source: Knesset]Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at a rally in Tel Aviv. Over 100,000 people have gathered in Kings of Israel Square to support Rabin and the Oslo peace process (see September 13, 1993 and October 6, 1995). The rally is designed to be light-hearted, in contrast with the angry, combative rallies staged by radical conservatives to oppose the peace agreements (see October 1995). Rabin gives a short radio interview before leaving the stage at the rally, and tells listeners, “People have their personal security but they do not have doubts that the path of peace should be pursued.” Rabin’s wife Leah is asked if her husband is wearing a bulletproof vest. “Have you gone crazy?” she replies. “What are we, in Africa?… I don’t understand the ideas you journalists have.” Meanwhile, law student Yigal Amir (see September 13, 1993 and October 6, 1995) is sitting on a concrete flower planter in the parking lot. A guard notices Amir and whispers into his microphone, “For God’s sake. What’s that dark guy doing down there? Is he one of us?” When Rabin walks by Amir to go to his car, Amir pulls out a gun and fires three shots. Two hollow-point bullets strike Rabin in the chest, severing major arteries and destroying his spinal cord. The third strikes Rabin’s bodyguard in the arm. “It’s nothing!” Amir shouts. “It’s just a joke! Blanks, blanks!” Police seize Amir; the wounded bodyguard rushes Rabin to the hospital, where he is pronounced dead 90 minutes later. When the police inform Amir that Rabin has died, he tells them, “Do your work. I’ve done mine.” Turning to an officer, he adds, “Get some wine and cakes. Let’s have a toast.” Someone later goes through Rabin’s pockets and finds a bloodied piece of paper with the lyrics to a popular tune, “The Song of Peace,” copied on it. Rabin had joined in singing the song at the rally. Author Craig Unger later writes that aside from the personal tragedy of the assassination, “In part because of his legacy as a great Israeli military commander, no one in Israel was, or ever could be, a more forceful figure than Rabin in promoting the peace process. As a result, his murder was a devastating blow to the Oslo principle, the principle of land for peace.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 141-143; Knesset Homepage, 2008]

Three US presidents—Bill Clinton, George Bush, and Jimmy Carter—join in honoring Rabin’s life and memory. [Source: Knesset]The reaction to the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (see November 4, 1995) is overwhelming. Millions of Israelis and Americans mourn his death both on a personal level and in concern for the fragile Israeli-Palestinian peace accords (see September 13, 1993). President Bill Clinton calls him “my partner and my friend. I admired him, and I loved him very much.” Former presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, and Bush’s Secretary of State, James Baker, speak movingly of Rabin’s legacy of peace. But others have different views. Millions of American fundamentalist Christians view Rabin’s assassination as an act of God. The peace talks “were going against the word of God,” says prominent fundamentalist Kay Arthur. “I believe that God stopped [the peace talks] by the things that happened.… I think God did not want the Oslo accord to go through.” Rabin’s widow, Leah Rabin, accuses Israel’s Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu of inciting violence “against my husband and [leading] the savage demonstrations against him” (see October 1995). [Unger, 2007, pp. 142-143]

Pakistan, which owes North Korea US$ 40 million for No-dong missiles it has purchased (see December 29, 1993 and Shortly After and November 19-24, 1995), tells the North Koreans it does not have the money and cannot pay for them. Instead, the Pakistanis offer North Korea a uranium enrichment plant, a proposal first discussed by Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan and North Korea’s foreign minister Kim Yong-nam in 1992 (see August 1992). Israeli intelligence is monitoring Khan’s procurement network and learns of the proposal. It informs the US government, but the US does not show any special interest. General Moshe Ya’alon, who will later be chief of staff in the Israeli Defense Force, will comment: “I remember saying to the Americans some time in 1995 or 1996, ‘How to do think Pakistan is going to pay for all those No-dong missiles?’ But I was shouting myself hoarse. Nobody wanted to know.” According to North Korean defector Hwang Jang-yop (see 1997), the deal between Pakistan and North Korea is concluded in the summer of 1996 during a visit to Korea by a technical delegation from Khan Research Laboratories. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 256-257, 281]

Right-wing political leader Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu becomes Israel’s new prime minister. When the campaign to replace assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (see November 4, 1995) began in early 1996, even Netanyahu’s fellow Likud leaders did not believe he had a chance of being elected. At at least one rally after Rabin’s death, crowds chanted “Bibi’s a murderer!” accusing Netanyahu of inciting the violence that led to Rabin’s death (see October 1995 and November 4, 1995 and After). Netanyahu’s opponent, Shimon Peres, cast himself as Rabin’s successor, and the Clinton administration tacitly endorsed Peres as the best hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But Netanyahu is a polished orator with a strong following among the hardline conservatives and religious fundamentalists both in Israel and the US. He also knows how to appeal to America’s more secular, cosmopolitan Jewish community. He hired Arthur Finkelstein, a prominent Republican political consultant, to run a campaign smearing Peres as a weak, ineffective leader who will betray Israel to the Arabs. Peres was befuddled by Netanyahu’s slick, US-style attack campaign and his ability to secure financial and other support among American Christian fundamentalists. The election hung in the balance when a timely spate of Hamas bombings in February and March, and a Netanyahu ad campaign blaming the attack on Peres’s supposed weakness, gave Netanyahu enough voter support for him to eke out a razor-thin margin of victory. US envoy Dennis Ross, one of the Clinton officials involved in the Oslo peace talks, later recalls that he and his colleagues were horrified at Netanyahu’s victory. “Our collective relief became a collective dread,” he will later write. [Unger, 2007, pp. 143-144]

British and American intelligence agencies warn their governments of Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation activities, according to senior sources at the British Foreign Office and the CIA. One of the warnings states that Pakistan is “readying itself to sell or [is] selling already” to North Korea and possibly Iran. [Levy and Scott-Clark, 2007, pp. 260, 512]

Richard Perle. [Source: Public domain]The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli think tank, publishes a paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” [Washington Times, 10/7/2002; Chicago Sun-Times, 3/6/2003] The paper, whose lead author is neoconservative Richard Perle, is meant to advise the new, right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Other authors include: influential neoconservative academic and former Bush adviser Richard Perle, primarily responsible for the content of the paper; Meyrav Wurmser, the future director of the neoconservative Hudson Institute’s Center for Middle East Policy; her husband David Wurmser, the future chief adviser for Middle East policy for future vice-president Dick Cheney; neoconservative Douglas Feith, who will be the prime architect of the Iraq war; and a number of lesser-known neoconservatives, including James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Jeffrey T. Bergner, Jonathan Torop, and Robert Loewenberg. Rebuilding Zionism by Abandoning Past Policies - It advocates making a complete break with past policies by adopting a strategy “based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism.…” [Guardian, 9/3/2002]Aggressive, Militant Israeli Policy towards Arab Neighbors - Much along the lines of an earlier paper by Israeli Oded Yinon (see February 1982), the document urges the Israelis to aggressively seek the downfall of their Arab neighbors—especially Syria and Iraq—by exploiting the inherent tensions within and among the Arab States. The first step is to be the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. A war with Iraq will destabilize the entire Middle East, allowing governments in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and other countries to be replaced. “Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them,” the paper says. [Perle, 7/8/1996; Guardian, 9/3/2002; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 3/19/2003] Iraq is first on the list of nations to be transformed. Saddam Hussein must be overthrown, the authors say. But Iraq has long served as a counterweight to the Shi’ite theocracy of Iran; with the two at loggerheads, neither could pose as serious a threat to Israel as it could if not opposed by the other. To counter this, Perle and his co-authors propose restoring the Hashemites (an ancient Arab dynasty; King Faisal I of Iraq was a Hashemite) to power. Instead of the largely Shi’ite Iraqis aligning themselves with their fellow Shi’a in Iran after Hussein’s overthrow, the Hashemite government would align itself with the pro-Western Jordan, long a Hashemite regime. Unfortunately, the authors propose no plan to actually make such an extraordinary regime succession happen, nor do they seem concerned with some Iraqi Shi’ites’ alignment with Islamist terrorists or with many Shi’ites’ close ties to Iran. [Unger, 2007, pp. 145-148]Abandoning Oslo Accords, Militant Palestinian Policy - Other suggestions for Israel include abandoning the Oslo Accords, developing a foreign policy based on a traditional balance of power strategy, reserving its right to invade the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of a strategy of “self-defense,” abandoning any notion of “land for peace,” reestablishing a policy of preemptive strikes, forging closer ties to the US while taking steps towards self-reliance, and seeking an alternative to Yasser Arafat as leader of the PLO. [Perle, 7/8/1996]'Seeds of a New Vision' - All these questions need not be answered right away, according to co-author Meyrav Wurmser. The document is “the beginning of thought,” she says, “… the seeds of a new vision.” Similar to American Christian Right's Vision - According to author Craig Unger, the ideology of “ACB” is, in essence, a secularized version of the theology of the American Christian Right. Christian Zionists insist that Jews were ordained by God to reclaim the Biblican land of Judea and Samaria in the West Bank; the paper asserts that claim as well. The paper echoes Christian fundamentalists by demanding “the unconditional acceptance of Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension.” Perle and his fellow neoconservatives want to push the boundaries even further: the Bible can be interpreted to countenance Jewish dominion over all or parts of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and even Saudi Arabia. Thusly, the authors claim that Israel and the US, by waging war against Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, would reshape the “strategic environment” in the Middle East and greatly expand Israel’s influence in the region. Influence in Upcoming Bush Administration - Perle will later become chairman of President Bush’s influential Defense Policy Board and will be instrumental is moving Bush’s US policy toward war with Iraq after the 9/11 attacks, as will Feith and the Wurmsers. [Unger, 2007, pp. 145-148]

Newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (see May 29, 1996) flies to Washington, DC, to visit one of his strongest political supporters, neoconservative Richard Perle. Perle is the chief author of a new strategy proposal called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Security in the Region” (see July 8, 1996). In essence, Perle’s policy proposal is an update of fellow neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz’s Defense Planning Guide (see February 18, 1992), which had so horrified Clinton and Bush officials. But Netanyahu is clearly pleased with the proposal. After meeting with Perle, Netanyahu addresses the US Congress. Quoting extensively from the proposal, he tells the lawmakers that the US must join Israel in overseeing the “democratization” of the Middle East. War might be a necessity to achieve this goal, he warns. While the “Clean Break” authors are primarily concerned with Iraq and Syria, Netanyahu takes a longer view. “The most dangerous of these regions is Iran,” he says. [Unger, 2007, pp. 145-148]

Cover of ‘Tyranny’s Ally’. [Source: Amazon (.com)]Neoconservative David Wurmser, the co-author of “A Clean Break,” the recently prepared plan to redraw the Middle East (see July 8, 1996), writes a book, Tyranny’s Ally, in which he advocates that the US use military force to literally redraw the map of the Middle East. In his book, Wurmser says that Iran’s Shi’ites will be negated by Iraq’s Shi’ites, whom for some unexplained reason can be expected “to present a challenge to Iran’s influence and revolution.” Wurmser writes that by overthrowing Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the US will destabilize the role of the mullahs in Iran as well. “Any serious display of American determination,” Wurmser writes, will cause “our regional enemies to wilt.” Overthrowing Hussein “will send terrifying shock waves into Tehran… and will promote pro-American coalitions in the region, unravel hostile coalitions.” We even asserts that “the Iraqi Shi’ites… if liberated from [Hussein’s tyranny], can be expected to present a challenge to Iran’s influence and revolution.” In 2007, author Craig Unger writes sarcastically, “Democracy would spread throughout the region! Israel would be secure and the US would have allies in the oil-rich states of Iran and Iraq! But, again, the text contained no facts to back up Wurmser’s assumptions.” Wurmser acknowledges those “who guided my understanding” as Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi, “Clean Break” co-author Richard Perle, and Perle’s close colleague Douglas Feith, among others, leading Unger to observe, “In other words, the neocon echo chamber had begun to rely on itself to reinforce their own myths.” [Unger, 2007; Unger, 2007]

An unnamed high-ranking State Department official helps a nuclear smuggling ring connected to Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan and Pakistan’s ISI to plant “moles” in US military and academic institutions that handle nuclear technology, according to FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds will later leave the FBI, becoming a whistleblower, and say she knows this based on telephone conversations she translated shortly after 9/11. The moles, mostly Ph.D students, are planted by Turkish and Israeli elements in the network, which obtains nuclear technology for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program and for re-sale by Khan. Edmonds will later say she thinks there are several transactions of nuclear material every month: “I heard at least three transactions like this over a period of 2½ years. There are almost certainly more.” She will also say that the network appears to obtain information “from every nuclear agency in the United States.” The State Department official apparently arranges security clearance for some of the moles, enabling them to work in sensitive nuclear research facilities, including the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, which is responsible for the security of the US nuclear deterrent. [Sunday Times (London), 1/6/2008] The high-ranking State Department official who is not named by Britain’s Sunday Times is said to be Marc Grossman by both Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story and former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, writing in the American Conservative. [Raw Story, 1/20/2008; American Conservative, 1/28/2008; American Conservative, 11/1/2009]

In 2004, it will be reported, “A former very senior CIA counterintelligence official told UPI that in 1998-99, the CIA discovered an Israeli couple, who were subcontracted to a US phone company, were working for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. ‘They did incredible damage—they got incredibly sensitive data, including key words identifying individuals or projects,’” this source said, adding he himself gave the case to the FBI. Additional details are not known. [United Press International, 12/9/2004] In 2005, a US criminal indictment will reveal that the FBI began monitoring some Israeli diplomatic officials in the US by April 1999 (see April 13, 1999-2004), but is it not known if there is any connection between that and this case.

The Oslo peace accords between Israel and Palestine (see September 13, 1993) break down, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat accusing one another of noncompliance. Netanyahu has not implemented the first scheduled withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the West Bank, and the second is well overdue. The New York Times’s Anthony Lewis lays the blame squarely on Netanyahu: “There is and always has been only one way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: land for peace. And the Netanyahu government has now made it clear that it has no intention of withdrawing from enough of the land Israel occupies in the West Bank to make a deal imaginable.” When the White House pressures Netanyahu to restart the peace process, he turns for support to America’s Christian Right (see January 19-23, 1998). [Unger, 2007, pp. 156]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in Washington three days before his scheduled meeting with President Clinton and Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat to discuss the stalled peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians (see Early 1998). Before meeting with Clinton and Arafat, Netanyahu meets with conservative televangelist and political activist Jerry Falwell—and a thousand of Falwell’s most devoted followers. “I put together one thousand people or so to meet with Bibi [Netanyahu] and he spoke to us that night,” Falwell later recalls. “It was all planned by Netanyahu as an affront to Clinton.” Falwell promises to mobilize 200,000 pastors across the United States to “tell President Clinton to refrain from putting pressure on Israel.” Falwell’s guest at the proceedings, fellow televangelist John Hagee (who will soon give $1 million to the United Jewish Appeal in hopes of hastening the Biblical “End Times”), tells the crowd that the Jews’ return to the Holy Land is prophecy of the “rapidly approaching… final moments of history.” Hagee then leads the crowd in a frenzied chant of “Not one inch! Not one inch!”—how much land they intend to see Israel give the Palestinians. When Netanyahu discusses the rally with the press four days later, he merely says: “I talk to liberals, I talk to conservatives, I talk to Jews, I talk to non-Jews. These meetings reflect the fact that Israel enjoys support from diverse circles in the United States.” But Richard Haass, a former Bush National Security Council official, says Netanyahu is playing political hardball. “This was a way for [Netanyahu] to push back,” Haass says. “If the White House was trying to make Mr. Netanyahu pay a price domestically for his lack of cooperation, essentially Mr. Netanyahu was sending a return signal: ‘Two can play at this game. I can spend more time with your political opponents and this is something that can come back and bite you.’” [Unger, 2007, pp. 156-157]

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